John
Skinner
University of Wisconsin - Madison - USA
29-9-1985
Dear
John,
I
thank you for your letter of September 18th. I’m pleased you received the Supplement
and your comments are most encouraging, I can assure you. Many thanks for
giving me mileage in the historical society newsletter.
Over
the years that I have been doing this research I had hoped it would prove to
have some value. Being so scattered made the going difficult. It needed to be
collected somehow to make up the picture. I’m sure then is still a lot of
material around that still needs to be found. One thing leads to another. For
instance your information regarding Dr Bitgood and the blood groupings of
chickens. I was not aware of this. I will be looking forward to reading his
references. I knew it had been done with humans as Heyerdahl mentioned taking
blood samples in Aku Aku, his story
of the expedition to Easter Island in an endeavour to determine antecedents of
the population.
In
the Gallus species, which I hope to have out within the next few months,
I deal with the osteological aspects of the chicken. Not that I have any
qualifications in this area, but I lean on C.A.Finsterbusch Cockfighting
all over the world to make the point - the difference between the Bankiva
and the Malay - in bone structure. I will send you a copy when I print it.
Professor
Solheim of the Department of Anthropology University of Hawaii has invited me
to write an article for Asian
Perspectives, journal of archaeology and prehistory of Asia and Pacific,
published by the University of Hawaii as the general nature of my research
covering that area. I only hope I don’t run out of time to get all this
material I haven’t still sorted out but I am working on it.
Fine
on your White Cochin Bantam. As I think you know my son and I have been
breeding Pekin Bantams the counterpart of your Cochin in Australia for close
an 20 years. We have done very little the last 2 years but are back into them
this year. David lives a couple of miles away from me and has the Blacks,
Whites and Blues. I have the Cuckoos, Brown Reds here and hatch the chickens.
We have some early chicks this year and at the moment they are doing pretty
well. Spring is in the air. Would not fancy battening down for your Wisconsin
counties. Fortunately we don’t have snow here.
Hope
your retirement goes well. Guess you will have plenty to keep you busy. Am
enclosing photos from our Pekin Club
Newsletter and some of the 1984 Animal Shows birds which you may
find of interest.